Living Forest Oceanside Campground and RV Park earned an award from Tourism Vancouver Island for its social media campaign to draw tourists to the area.
Marketing coordinator Scott Littlejohn was presented with the Multi-media Marketing Campaign Award at the organization’s annual awards gala, held in Sooke last month. The award recognizes a business or organization for its innovative use of various forms of social media and traditional marketing mediums.
Littlejohn sensed that a main reason people come to Vancouver Island is to enjoy its parks. The campaign, Park it in Nanaimo, reflected a call to action to use Nanaimo as a base camp for exploring the Island.
This year Living Forest organized an on-site camping and lifestyle trade show, but that was just the beginning. Living Forest used QR codes linked to a separate Facebook landing page where local and site information and quizzes were featured.
The QR codes were put onto necklaces creating IDOLS that were used in scavenger hunts and contesting for free overnight camping. In addition, a contest on Facebook was incorporated for a week’s stay which spiked Facebook engagement and increased their number of fans by 20 per cent, all the while carefully monitoring their page using humouwr, content and local information. They also promoted competing regions and campgrounds to encourage touring around the Island.
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